Baseball team faces ups and downs this season

by Matthew Lauster-STAFF WRITER

Tue, Apr 4th 2017 10:35 pm

Photos courtesy of the Brockport Athletic Communications via Flickr

The College at Brockport Golden Eagles have been through it all. This season, the baseball team has seen a laundry list of injuries, comeback wins and crushing defeats. However, with one month left, the team is determined to get healthy, ending the last month of the regular season with a winning record to secure a good position for the SUNYAC Tournament.

"We want to accomplish a lot obviously," infielder Matthew Van Allen said. "But we want to get better each day and play our best baseball once the SUNYAC Tournament comes around."

Catcher Justin Valentino also gave his ideas on the team's challenges so far this season.

"The biggest challenge moving forward is not getting distracted by anything and staying focused on the goals we have set," Valentino said. "There may be some weeks where the team is crammed with games and we need to compete at a high level and stay mentally focused in order to come out on top."

The Golden Eagles already have a winning record at 12-7 without a fully healthy roster. The biggest factor that Brockport team's season hinges on is just that: the team's health. Van Allen cited his opinion of the team's biggest challenge as staying healthy.

There are many ways to accomplish this but he made it clear by saying: "We need to focus on our bodies and eating right and staying in shape."

With their last win being a one run victory over the second ranked SUNY Cortland Red Dragons, a fully loaded Brockport team is something no other team in the conference wants to face.

Even though this has been a season with numerous hardships, this team has a lot to hang its hat on. Van Allen praised the Golden Eagles' sense of togetherness as their biggest strength.

"The biggest thing that lead us to that record was how we played together," Van Allen said. "We are serious about winning but also like to be loose and have fun on the field on in the dugout."

Especially with being able to have the same sense of togetherness with players who maybe never thought they would see a lot of time on the field being called upon and with other players having to take on new roles, togetherness will be a very important asset.

Van Allen had a specific area in mind that the Golden Eagles could improve on in the coming weeks.

"An improvement that we can make as a team is being ready for a chance when we are called upon," Van Allen said. "We have had a lot of guys go down with injuries this year and we have done a decent job in stepping up when our number is called upon."

Looking back on the season, Van Allen had many fond memories. He viewed the comeback win over Rutgers-Camden in the Florida Spring Training trip that took place earlier in March.

"The best moment of the season so far has been the 5-0 comeback win against Rutgers-Camden in Florida," he said. "We faced a lot of adversity that game and came out of it with a win."

That game seems like a metaphor this season. The team faced a lot of hardships in that game just as they have in the entire season as a whole and they just put their heads down and came through on the other side to victory.